Consciousness: The Path to Peace

047—What do you do when you feel “off,” not feeling how you want? Maybe something unwanted has happened, or you’re worried or anxious about something. Perhaps you are filled with anger or sadness, frustration or disappointment. Maybe you just had a disagreement or argument with someone. YUCK!

When stuff like this happens, it can feel like this has been done to you, leaving you to struggle or suffer. 

Listen as Mary explains what is going on and how you can create—or change—your reality to release the struggle and find peace.

Consciousness: What it is, what happens when we live without it, and how bringing it into your life can change everything.

This is an episode of awakening!

---

To learn more about Mary Obana, visit her website:
maryobana.com

To learn more about having Mary connect you directly to your own spiritual guidance, visit:
maryobana.com/private-reading

For more information about Mary's book "Shine: A Simple Guide to Finding Your Light and Letting It Shine on the World", visit:
maryobana.com/amazon

To contact Mary directly or get added to receive her newsletter, please email her at:
mary@maryobana.com

Follow her:
Facebook @maryobana.shine
Instagram @obanamary
LinkedIn @maryobana

To learn more about Mary's work with The Food Whisperers, please visit:
thefoodwhisperers.com

To learn more about Mary Obana, visit her website:
maryobana.com

To learn more about having Mary connect you directly to your own spiritual guidance, visit:
maryobana.com/private-reading

For more information about Mary's book "Shine: A Simple Guide to Finding Your Light and Letting It Shine on the World", visit:
maryobana.com/amazon

Transcript

Mary Obana 0:05 

I'm Mary Obana. Welcome to Shine. I’m all about friendly, soul-nourishing, spiritually-inspired conversations that expand perspectives and offer practical guidance so you can live joyfully and shine brightly. 

I believe:

Everyone has something special within them, a unique gift—a light you are to find and share with the world. You are meant to shine. 

I believe:

You have a deep knowing; guidance that is ready to serve you. It is always available if you listen.

I believe:

You are meant to live with complete joy and peace—nothing less. It’s just awaiting your allowing. 

Ready to get to it? Here we go!

Mary Obana 00:51

Well hello! So happy you are here. Thank you for joining me! 

If you are a regular listener of this podcast, you know that I have been doing a lot of work connecting people to their guidance so that they can hear and receive the messages they need. That beautiful, loving spiritual guidance is around each of us. People come to me for many reasons. They might feel stuck, they might have something going on in their life and need some clarity, or they find themselves just guided to me. Maybe they read my book; perhaps a friend had a session with me; maybe they were just curious. It’s such a privilege to do this work. To connect people to the messages that they are meant to hear.

One of the things I’ve noticed – whether it is someone I am working with or a friend or loved one, is that struggle, suffering, or just feeling “off” has a way of getting our attention. It stops us. It has a clever way of awakening us.

Struggle or discontent of any kind forces us to notice and learn. But the struggle will continue if you don’t intervene.

The amazing thing is that we can. This is what today’s episode is about: how to live WITHOUT the struggle. Without the stress, without the anguish. Without the worry, without the pain. Without ANY unwanted feelings. I’m going to share how.

Mary Obana 02:37

Our purpose is to evolve into conscious beings. Suffering comes from a lack of consciousness. Being immersed in the mind makes us feel like victims of whatever ails us. The pain we are feeling, the struggle, our circumstances. The mind – where the Ego lives – is what needs to be tackled. And consciousness is the nemesis of the Ego. 

Before we talk about consciousness, we have to address the EGO because the EGO is at the heart of suffering. The Ego – left unchecked -- processes circumstances and interprets them as good or bad. Shakespeare once said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” But even more, believe it or not, suffering and negativity fuel the Ego. 

The Ego lives in our minds. It’s separate from who we are, meaning it’s not our true self. It’s the part of the mind that is insecure, needy, and fearful. It dwells in the world of scarcity. I think of it like a sneaky creature! It’s not only separate from who we are; it makes us FEEL separate from everyone else, too, so it makes us feel lonely. It’s at the heart of negative emotions like jealousy, envy, resentment, insecurity, anger, and despair. It also is behind our drive to acquire things – the better job, the bigger house, the fancy car. It does a really good job of convincing us it will make us feel better because the Ego makes us focus on what others think of us. The Ego can also generate pleasure and excitement, but that pleasure and excitement is always short-lived. The Ego can never be satisfied. It always wants more, and it’s always attached to outcomes. So if we don’t get the promotion, or whatever it is we’ve convinced ourselves will make us feel better about ourselves, we can feel disappointment, unworthiness, anger, or even victimized as thoughts flood our minds with all the negative self-talk. And the Ego is a clever little bugger. Self-righteousness disguises as justice, greed disguises as drive, judgment disguises as truth. And the Ego wants you to believe you are being intelligent. I’m a big fan of spiritual author and teacher Eckhart Tolle. Tolle is best known for his books The Power of Now and A New Earth. You may have read them or at least heard of them. He says, “Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the Ego. The Ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest and is extremely short-sighted. Cleverness divides; intelligence includes.”

Whenever you feel yucky, the Ego is in the house.

So what are these unwanted feelings that we CAN live without? Let’s go through the big ones. 

STRESS

Stress is created when you want something to be different. Something is going on -- or maybe not going on - that is not what you want. And what you desire feels elusive. It’s when you have left the moment, that is the present, and jumped on that train to the future in your mind, getting whipped up contemplating all the horrible outcomes if something doesn’t change. You feel your blood pressure rising, your anxiousness increasing, and without any control. Ego – present and accounted for! 

HOW ABOUT FEELING FEARFUL, DEPRESSED, UNWORTHY, GUILTY, INSECURE, WORRIED?

Do you know that every one of these unwanted negative emotions is created by the Ego in your mind? Our mind is like a busy factory pumping out all these negative, crazy thoughts, stringing together all these data points (mostly of our creation) that feel like truth but that have been processed through our own unique perspective. The result? Yuckiness. Yup, that’s a technical term for all those thoughts, played out often in painful, excruciating detail that makes us feel horrible. 

So let’s take a couple of these. 

Here’s one: GUILT.  

I’m not talking about the judicial system verdict of guilt; I’m talking about the one that happens in your mind: self-imposed guilt.

Guilt is when our mind processes something we have done and evaluates it negatively and quickly, self-judging creating feelings of distress, failure, shame, regret. And the crazy thing about guilt? While it can at times be healthy—motivating us to take action to create necessary and valuable healing—sometimes, many times, it is completely imagined or an overestimation of our role in a situation, making us feel like our misdoing had a far more significant impact than it actually did. There’s even something called “maladaptive guilt,” which is when you feel guilty that you didn’t take action to prevent something you had no way of predicting. It’s like those thoughts, you know “If I had not given them permission to go out that night, such and such would not have happened.” That kind of thing.

Guilt of all forms can lead to a whole bunch of unwanted things: anxiety, insomnia, and if not addressed or let go, can even manifest physically – back issues, stomach pain, or worse. Things that we don’t connect to our emotions or thoughts. It’s amazing what you can learn when you listen to your body. What is it telling you?

Ok, here’s another one: unworthiness

One of the biggest culprits for feelings of unworthiness comes from childhood. If you felt emotional abandonment, it can create anxiety, distrust, shame, and inadequacy. This can negatively impact our ability to connect with others as adults, making it difficult to form healthy, trusting relationships. Emotional abandonment is when you don’t receive encouragement, support, love, and validation. Now when you were young, you may have been well taken care of physically – meaning you had a roof over your head, you were clothed and fed, but your emotional needs were ignored. Now the truth is, our parents or caregivers did the best they could with the consciousness they had. This is true for all of us. We can only operate from the consciousness that is – how limited or expansive that consciousness might be. But, OUR MINDS convince us of these false assumptions things like, I’m wrong. I’m bad. I don’t deserve love. I’m going to suppress my real feelings because I don’t want to rock the boat. I don’t want to be abandoned again. I can’t make any mistakes. I have to make everyone happy to keep me safe. All of this, all of these thoughts, comes from your mind. Coping mechanisms that you have come to believe keep you safe but NO LONGER SERVE YOU. Again, the Ego is fast at work.

Let’s take conflict. I mean conflict of any kind. 

When we find ourselves in a disagreement or something is escalating into an argument, there is always one thing at the core of this within us: a sense of “rightness.” Whatever the situation or topic, we have in our mind convinced ourselves that we are right and someone is wrong. It’s the ONLY way an argument or disagreement can be. When this happens – when we feel that emotion bubbling up within us – and you know what feeling I’m talking about, right? – that one where you feel that tightness inside, the aggravation or anger building and rising within you. Your mind gets busy going to work crafting, packaging, preparing all the reasons you are right, all the reasons they are wrong, how they hurt you, betrayed you, disappointed you, which fires up the negativity and gets all those soldiers lined up within your mind, ammo loaded and prepared for battle. As you listen to what the other is saying, you can feel the defensiveness building within you. The Ego is fast at work, fueling the dissonance between you and the other, convincing you all the ways you have been wronged further emboldening your sense of “rightness.” The Ego is in its element.

I can’t remember a period in my lifetime where separation from others has been more palpable in our culture. So much disagreeing. So much conflict. So much duality. Such discontent. 

Mary Obana 12:14

Ok, so what? What do we do with this? What are we to learn from this? What are we to know? 

You can live without ALL of this. And consciousness is the magic solution.

Now did you just think to yourself – or even say out loud, “Huh?”

This idea of consciousness might seem like one of those advanced, evolved, black belt Dalai Lama type maneuvers available only to the “enlightened.”

But it’s shockingly straightforward. 

Though it can sometimes feel like life is just happening TO you, the truth is you have CONTROL. You have CHOICE. You have FREE WILL. You have the POWER to create your reality. To shape your experiences. To live with joy. To lose the struggle.

Struggle comes from a LACK of consciousness. 

And do you know what? We are in this life experience to discover consciousness. Ok, stay with me!

The struggle, suffering, dissonance, conflict, pain, separation from one another can only exist without consciousness. Consciousness is to be aware of the reality that is. To be aware that you are not your thoughts. Our minds create our thoughts. And our mind – believe it or not – is not who we are. We are SEPARATE from the thoughts. While our minds can convince us otherwise, in reality, we are not identified with thoughts. You are not identified with ANYTHING, really.

Now did you just say – what? Am I not identified with ANYTHING?

Well, yeah. 

Identity is the work of the Ego. It separates you from everything and everyone. It isolates you. It disconnects you. When in reality, you are connected to everything. See, from our limited perspective, it feels like we are separate. Ok, let me give you an analogy. When we look around, there are all these things: people, trees, buildings, cars and so forth. But when you zoom out, I mean WAY, way out, it’s just one planet. One earth. One world. 

Or take our bodies. If we look under a microscope, it appears that there are all these cells – all these “things.” If you pull back, you actually see that you are one body. One human. One being. 

If we pulled back even further, we would see that we are connected to something vast and magnificent. But like everything, it’s a perspective. If you look close, it seems separate; if you look from a grander perspective, it’s all one. The Universe is vast. Existence is vast. You, me, everyone, everything is part of the existence that is. The love that is. But you feel separate. This is part of the duality of the earthly human experience. Part of the world in which we exist. 

In the same way, while it can feel like we are disconnected from everything and everyone – separate from everything and everyone – we are one thing, one humanity, connected through the energy of love. 

Ok, let’s take a breath. Is your head spinning? It’s a lot to process. But we are all ONE. We are connected through LOVE to all. But the Ego convinces us that we have much to fear. That we are not safe. It makes us afraid. It puts us against others. It sees the separation - this "otherness" which is the source of the issue. When you are “other,” it makes you feel unsafe – because anything outside of you can be perceived as a threat. Others are the ones that don’t see things the way you do. Others want something that you think is meant for you. Others have things that you want. Others are better. Others are worse. Others are separate from you.


Mary Obana 16:36

So back to consciousness. Put simply, consciousness is like zooming out from YOU. Consciousness is observing yourself. What am I feeling? What am I thinking? And with that zooming out, with this observation, consciousness creates the awareness that you are not your thoughts. And there’s more. You are not your body; you are not what you do, you are not where you live, you are not your role... you ARE. You are the BEING that IS. It awakens you and allows you to see the truth. And once you see what truly is, you are no longer threatened by anything. You are no longer separate from anyone. You are the soul that is. And the soul that will forever and always be.

So a LACK of consciousness convinces you that you are what you do, who you are with, the car you drive, the neighborhood you live in, the title on your business card. And so, the Ego is activated. The identity is created. And once you have an IDENTITY, you are SEPARATE from everyone, for an IDENTITY is made to make us feel unique. Distinctive. And once you fall into the trap of distinctive, you compare, judge, and find the separation from everything. From everyone. From all.

The Ego is cunning and clever. It knows where you are vulnerable. So it seeks to find its way into your thoughts. It takes you away from the moment—the only thing that is—and fills your mind with thoughts that transport you to the future. To worry and anxiety. To the feelings of doubt. It plays and replays in the theater of the mind the negative possibilities—all the fear. No one ever worries their way to peace. It is not possible.

Or it takes you to the past where you replay something that happened – how it should have been different. Could have been different. And your mind is filled with thoughts of regret, remorse, and guilt for things that have once occurred and have been translated through the mind to be negative.

The Ego takes you on these trips away from what IS. It takes you to the future where worry and stress, and anxiety lives. Or to the past where regret, guilt, blame, and disappointment live. All these little trips distract us from what is real. From the present moment. The only place where we can LIVE, savor, and take action. The only place where there is peace.

The now is the enemy of the Ego. The Ego can’t live in the now. This is why it teases us, baits us, hijacks us from the peace of the now. The beauty of the now. The now where worry and regret have no place. Where they cannot be.

Mary Obana 19:27

So how do we snap ourselves out of it? 

If you EVER find yourself with unwanted feelings – you just aren’t feeling the way you want to. You know, you’re scared or you’re depressed, or you’re insecure or jealous or whatever, NOTICE IT!! Can I tell you, the mere act of NOTICING is like a black belt maneuver! And all noticing requires is awareness. Checking in with ourselves. Hey, I’m starting to get angry. Wait a second, why am I feeling like this? Whoa, I’m stressed out. Wait, hold on, why do I keep replaying that thing that happened in the past? Maybe it was decades ago, maybe it was yesterday, but STOP! 

When you don’t feel the way you want, first accept what you are feeling, then put on the brakes. When you STOP, this noticing separates you from the emotion. And when you separate yourself from the emotion, it’s impossible to identify with it. It stops the feeling and doesn’t allow the mind to take hold and run with it. Because when it gets deeply entrenched in the mind, it controls your thinking, and the machine of the mind activates. 

So when we identify with anger, we start thinking angry thoughts. And if we identify with stress, we start thinking stressful thoughts. When you get trapped in the cycle of emotions and emotional thinking and all that negative self-talk, your interpretation of events becomes completely distorted in a negative and potentially destructive way.

Mary Obana 21:07

Consciousness is simply NOTICING! Consciousness is observing. 

No one wants to struggle. No one wants to be scared. No one wants to worry. And no one needs to. Ever.

Consciousness. You can only thrive from this place. This place where you feel connected. Appreciation. Love. Beauty. Peace.

The path to peace is consciousness. Peace is the end of the Ego. And everyone—EVERYONE— can access consciousness. Consciousness is observing what is in that moment. With the awareness that comes with consciousness, you dis-identify with the thoughts, the emotions, the reactions, and it happens automatically because, through observing, you separate from them. You ARE the awareness.

Alright, if you’re like me, I somehow used to think that consciousness was reserved for those that devoted their lives to monkhood or something or years of meditation, which was only attained after a life-long or many lives-long practice. What I’ve come to understand is that consciousness is actually really simple! It’s just being aware of your thoughts and feelings as they occur. I like what Tolle says, “It’s not really a doing, but an alert “seeing.” When you make the shift from thinking to awareness or to consciousness, an intelligence far greater than the Ego’s cleverness begins to operate in your life.” 

All those thoughts, all those stories that we’ve carried with us that seemed to live right at the surface, triggering unwanted thoughts or feelings, lose their grip on us. We no longer identify with them. 

And all we have to do is NOTICE!

Consciousness is simply observing what’s going on within us! 

It’s like taking a step outside of ourselves and asking what am I feeling? What am I thinking? And the mere act of witnessing it thwarts its power and momentum. It stops negative feelings in its tracks. So when we feel stress, doubt, frustration, worry, yuckiness, whatever it is; when we find ourselves facing conflict… whoop! Out we go!

Zoom out. Time to awaken to the consciousness.

You have everything you need to step into a life of consciousness. A place that makes you feel the way you want to feel. A place where struggle and anguish cannot exist. A place you’re going to really want to live.

And it’s completely waiting for you.

It’s like an awakening. A conscious life is a fulfilled and peaceful life. A conscious life feels safe. Loving. There is no darkness. Only light and love. Because you see. Step out and away from all the negative thoughts and emotions. And poof! There you are. Without them.

Be the being you are. Awaken to the reality of what is and acknowledge that the mind and Ego and fear only exist when you live without consciousness. And I can’t imagine a better time to awaken.

Now I mean, can you imagine a world where everyone lived with consciousness? All the feelings of anger, dissonance, and conflict would go away. All the negative self-talk, feelings of despair and jealousy and discouragement and doubt and frustration and irritation and grief would be replaced with optimism, enthusiasm, gratitude, freedom, love, and peace. And all it takes is awareness. Noticing. Seeing the thought, not being the thought. And voila! 

It is so accessible to all of us. 

Who do you know that can benefit from this message? Please share this episode with them. And thank you for your ratings and reviews because they really help others discover these messages, too. And we want to spread peace, don’t we?

If I can help you in any way, email me at mary@maryobana.com, DM me, or reach out to me through my website at maryobana.com.

I’m really glad you joined me today. Here’s to inviting consciousness into your life. One moment at a time. Here’s to shining and peace. 

Until next time, take it easy.